Saturday, August 15, 2009

Some friends reinstituted their "Ice Cream Bowl" tradition after a 5-year hiatus. My husband was saying he didn't want to compete this year, but I persuaded him, saying it is always more fun to participate. Even so, it sort of snuck up on me. So Friday night at about ten o'clock I went to the store to buy ingredients to make the custard for a Salted Butter Caramel Ice Cream recipe I found online. I had been thinking it would be good to make a caramel ice cream with chunks of my grandmother's molasses cookies strewn throughout. So we worked until about midnight making caramel--the dry method with sugar over medium heat. We burned one batch and had to start over. I've never tried making it before and it was fun to try it. Now I think I could do spun sugar for a dessert sometime... When the caramel was ready we added the other ingredients to make the custard and then put it in the refrigerator to cool overnight.

Saturday morning II made my Grandmother's molasses cookies. It had been a while. Those cookies are SO good!

Shortly before the event we made the ice cream and folded in broken molasses cookies.

It was worth all the late night effort it took because the ice cream tasted incredible! We called it "Salted Caramel Ginger Biscuit Ice Cream." It tied for first place this year.

It got me thinking about ice cream ideas for next time: I would love to do a really dark chocolate with dark cherries, or a malted milk ball... We'll have to see.